Citation Generator — APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard
Generate APA, MLA, Chicago, or Harvard citations, and build a reference list
APA citation
Smith, J. (2025). Understanding Climate Change. National Geographic. https://example.com/article
About Citation Generator
Generates properly formatted citations (with italics where each style requires them, and the right date format for each) in APA, MLA, Chicago, or Harvard style for websites, books, and journal articles, and builds an alphabetized reference list as you add sources.
Choose your citation style and source type, fill in the source details, and the formatted citation appears instantly. Add it to your running reference list and copy the full list when you're done.
Double-check author name formatting and capitalization against the original source before finalizing — citation generators handle the structural formatting reliably, but the accuracy of the underlying details is still on the person entering them.
Watch: Citation Generator in Action
- How do I create a citation?
- Pick a style (APA, MLA, Chicago or Harvard), choose the source type and fill in author, title, year and other fields. The formatted citation appears as you type and can be copied or added to your reference list.
- Does this guarantee my citations are completely accurate?
- It handles the structural formatting reliably, but the accuracy of the underlying details (author names, dates, publishers) is still on the person entering them. Double-check formatting and capitalization against the original source before finalizing.
- Which styles does it support?
- Four: APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago 17th edition in Notes-Bibliography form (the bibliography entry, not footnotes), and Harvard. Each can be used for a website, a book or a journal article, which are the only three source types offered.
- Can I rely on the result without checking it?
- No. Check every citation against your institution's, course's or publisher's own style guide before you submit. Instructors and journals often add local rules, and Harvard in particular differs between universities. The tool formats what you type and cannot confirm that your details are correct.
- What if there is no author or no year?
- Leave the author boxes empty and the title moves to the front of the entry, and a blank Year prints n.d. in APA and Harvard, or is left out in MLA and Chicago. Check whether your style guide wants a different handling.
- Does it look up a source from a URL or a DOI?
- No. It never visits the address and cannot find missing details. Every field is typed by you, and the URL is only printed in the citation as you entered it, with the protocol removed in MLA.
- In what order does the reference list appear?
- Alphabetical by the start of each entry, which is the author's last name or the title when there is no author, ignoring an opening quotation mark. The order does not depend on when you added each entry, and Copy Full List follows the same order.
- Is my reference list stored online?
- No. Everything stays in your browser.
How to use Citation Generator
Pick a Citation Style (APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago 17th edition Notes-Bibliography, or Harvard) and a Source Type (Website, Book or Journal Article). Fill in Author Last Name, Author First Name, Title and Year; leaving Year blank prints n.d. The remaining fields change with the source: a website asks for Site Name, URL, an Access Date and an optional full publication date, a book asks for Publisher and City, and a journal article asks for Journal Name, Volume, Issue and Pages.
The formatted citation updates in the card as you type. Copy Citation copies it with its italics intact. Add to Reference List stores it, and Copy Full List copies every saved entry in alphabetical order.
When to use it
Use it when you have a source open beside you and need a correctly ordered reference quickly, for a school essay, a bibliography page or a blog post that lists its sources. It suits one-off entries in any of the four styles, and a short alphabetical list that you can paste into Word or Google Docs with the italics already in place.
When not to use it
It handles a single author per entry and only three source types, so it cannot do books with editors, chapters, newspaper articles, videos, legal documents or sources with several authors. It does not create in-text citations or footnotes either. For those cases, use your institution's style guide or a reference manager.
Tips for best results
Copy the entry with the button instead of selecting the text by hand, since the button keeps the italics for titles and journal names and sets a hanging indent when pasted into a word processor. Add the access date only if you want a particular day; blank uses today's date. Enter the full publication date for a web page when you know it, because APA, MLA and Chicago then print the day and month, and Chicago drops its Accessed line.
Limitations
Each entry takes one author, entered as a separate last and first name, and the first name is turned into initials for APA and Harvard. There is no field for a DOI, edition, editor or page range of a web page. Harvard differs between universities, so this is one common arrangement, not the only one. The reference list exists only on the page: reloading clears it, and each entry stays in the style it was made in.
Privacy
Citations are assembled from your fields by a formatting function in your browser. The author, title and URL you type are not sent anywhere to be looked up, and the tool does not fetch the web page you cite. The saved reference list lives only in the page's memory and disappears when you reload or close it. The site counts a use of the tool, not your sources.
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